The Sheldrake . 
281 
They only green-fowl term, in every mere abound, 
That you would think they sate upon the very ground, 
Their numbers being so great/the waters covering quite, 
That rais’d, the spacious air is darken’d with their flight; 
Yet still the dangerous dykes, from shot do them secure. 
Where they from flash to flash, like the full epicure 
Waft, as they love to change their diet every meal. 
And near to them you see the lesser dibbling teale 
In bunches, with the first that fly from mere to mere, 
As they above the rest were lords of earth and air.” 
( Polyolbion, song xxv.) 
The Teal does not appear to have been valued as 
an article of food. In the regulations of 
the Northumberland Household Book , 1512, 
teals are ordered to be brought only when no other 
wild fowl can be procured. 
The Sheldrake, or Shieldrake, included by Harrison in 
his list of English birds, was common in many Sheldrake . 
parts of England. This handsome bird was 
called also the Burrow Duck, from its habit of breeding 
in rabbit burrows, in sandy soil in the neighbourhood of 
the sea. Sir Thomas Browne speaks of the “ Bargander, 
a noble-coloured fowl, which herd in coney-burrows.” 
This name, suggests Mr. Wilkins, may be a corruption of 
burrow-gander or burrow-duck. Drayton writes : — 
“The greedy sea-maw, fishing for the fry ; 
The hungry shell-fowl , from whose rape doth fly 
Th’ unnumber’d sholes; the mallard there did feed ; 
The teale and morecoot raking in the weed.” 
(The Man in the Moon.} 
The Loon is described by Sir Thomas 
Browne, as— 
Loon. 
“ a handsome and specious fowl, cristated, and with divided fin feet 
placed very backward, and after the manner of all such which the 
Dutch call arsvoote. They come about April, and breed in the broad 
waters; so making their nest on the water, that their eggs are seldom 
dry while they are set on.” (Yol. iv. p. 314.) 
